Over the last two months, nearly every state and territory has announced investigations into the market dominance of Facebook, Google, or both. Missing from those probes was the place Big Tech calls home: California.The Golden State’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, has been curiously silent as his peers made plans to examine the biggest tech firms…

Residents of Jersey City, New Jersey, voted overwhelmingly in favor of strict short-term rental regulations on Tuesday, putting an end to the high-profile feud between Airbnb and local officials that had engulfed the city in recent months. The move comes as a major blow to Airbnb, which spent more than $4.2 million blanketing Jersey City…

The air above Earth—especially above California, United States, Earth—might have way more of one particular climate-changing gas in it than anyone thought. And that could actually be good news.The gas is methane, CH4, the main component of natural gas—also a frequent byproduct of oil drilling, agriculture, animal husbandry, garbage decomposition, and farts. It’s relatively short-lived…

It was a few weeks before the 2016 election, and I was putting together a report on the future of online political discourse. We had canvassed thousands of the world's leading experts in technology and culture, and had begun the long task of interpreting the more than 700 responses to the final question in our…

This June, as the news bristled with headlines about Facebook’s cryptocurrency-to-be and the price of bitcoin once again soared, the mood in the San Francisco offices of Coinbase was subdued. In 2017, the cryptocurrency exchange was close to the frenetic epicenter of the bitcoin boom. Millions of people used its app to dip their toes…

On the first world of The Outer Worlds, I meet a man whose job is collecting taxes for grave sites. See, here on Edgewater all the graves are owned by the company that also owns the settlement, the factory, the food, the electricity, and probably the air by some devious legal loophole or another. So…

Android has a bit of a malware problem. The open ecosystem's flexibility also makes it relatively easy for tainted apps to circulate on third-party app stores or malicious websites. Worse still, malware-ridden apps sneak into the official Play Store with disappointing frequency. After grappling with the issue for a decade, Google is calling in some…

It all started with a joke about tacos. TikTok user @tinymeatgang69699 posted a clip of someone wheeze-scream-laughing at an array of kitschy framed signs in what seems to be a home goods store, one of which reads “Thank goodness I don’t have to hunt my own food. I don’t even know where tacos live.” Commenters—who,…

Pour one out for the OG Google Pixel 1. This month's Android security patches are out, and while you'll find bulletins covering the Pixel 2, 3, and 4, the original Google Pixel didn't make the cut. Google is ending support this month.ARS TECHNICAThis story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news,…

Let’s be honest: A lot of new devices are meant to stoke desire for something that you never even knew you wanted. (A tiny keyboard? Yes, please! A DNA test for your cat? Purrrr-fect!) But if you’re shopping for the best robot vacuum cleaner, it’s usually because you really, really need one. Whether you’re drowning…